It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and through the weekend. What’s the deal with that? The last few days have been rad, but no such luck for the road race this weekend. Just when I had my bike all dialed and ready to go I’m going to have to swap out the cork brake pads and carbon wheels. Or I could just live dangerously…

Last Friday night I hem and hawed around about doing the crit down in Imperial or doing the road race up around Solvang on Saturday. As it turns out, I did neither. I figured why start racing so early when I don’t need to, but now I kind of wish I would have gone to Imperial. Between Norm, Craig, Miller, Padgett, & Manning, they came away with a couple of wins and a pair of seconds. Woulda been fun to contribute to that.

I still got two good days of training in. On Saturday, Joey, Jamie, & I rode up to Angelus Oaks where there are still patches of snow on the side of the road. Then we came down and shot across Yucaipa so we could do Wildwood. I put in some pretty big efforts on both climbs, so when I hit San Timoteo Canyon solo and there was a headwind, I was pretty much hating life.

I figured the Sunday ride would be super casual since most everyone went racing on Saturday, but that wasn’t the case at all. Fresh off of two race wins, Norm was riding angry so that splintered the group into just 6 of us. Between the weight lifting workouts and Saturday’s ride, Sunday did me in. It was only about a 3-hour affair, but I still limped back to Mentone. I just gotta keep reminding myself that I’m supposed to feel like hell right now if I want to feel good when the MTB season is in full swing.

Last night they had a fund raiser dinner for the Redlands Bicycle Classic at Mikan and it was a pretty good time. I was a little disappointed in the turn-out. I expected more. I had raw fish and Denise had a teriyaki New York steak that was one of the best I’ve tasted in a long time. How’s that for a restaurant plug? I also had 3 pints of the Hangar 24 Orange Wheat, which made it just that more difficult to get up at 5 AM this morning to meet Kelly from work to ride Crafton. It was worth it though. I don’t do that ride enough and every time I do, I rediscover how great an area it is.

I just remembered that yesterday Ryder told me I smelled like a dog.


The trend lately in blogging is to post photos of food or post food and drink recipes on your blog. Here's my contribution.